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Short History of Cellphone Ringtones
RobotWisdom writes "This week's New Yorker magazine includes an interesting
short history of cellphone ringtones, including statistics on their (huge) profitability worldwide. My favorite quote: 'I spent three days of productive work time listening to polyphonic ringtone versions of speed metal, trying to find exactly the ringtone that expressed my personality with enough irony and enough coolness that I could live with it going off ten times a day. In a quiet room, in a meeting, this phone's gonna go off-- what are they going to hear?'"
Kewl
Neat
Cute
Distracting
Bothersome
Highly Annoying
Obnoxious
Grating
"Hello, is the proctologist available? I need something removed from somewhere."
coming soon: ringtones with thx 5.1 surround, so everyone can enjoy your taste in interruption melodies!
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Vibrate.
"In a quiet room, in a meeting, this phone's gonna go off--what are they going to hear?"
Among polite people, or, failing that, with a mobile phone jammer enabled--nothing.
They are going to hear that you have too much time on you hands...
I mean, $2-3 a PIECE? who the hell pays that? I am quite content with the standard ringer on my LG. It is a damn phone!
Seriously, I do not understand the level of popularity that ringtones have acheived - especially considering that they cost money! A cellphone plan costs enough already. I use a preprogrammed ringtone on my Audiovox CDM-4000 phone (1st gen CDMA for anyone unfamiliar with the particular phone), and while it's a bit cheesy I can instantly recognize that this tone is coming from my phone and my phone only - It's been ringing like this for almost 5 years. If I were to change ring tones often, not only would it be time&money consuming but I would also lose that mental 'training' of what my phone sounds like when it rings in a room full of people with ringing cellphones.
Yes, I do know people who have a ring tone for everyone in their phonebook. Perhaps it is useful to them other than being a fashion statement (since caller ID also identifies incoming callers) but is it really worth paying for?
Everyone else hollering "PUT YOUR FUCKING PHONE ON VIBRATE!"
Damn I hate ringtones.
sulli
RTFJ.
This is why i use the single beep ringer, its short and functional, and acceptable in all areas. As an added benifit, if you left it on somewhere you shouldn't like school or the movies, one beep could be anything and mos tpeople arn't even sure they heard it.
Like the saying goes, never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes. -Pyrotic
I was with my wife in a pizza place a few years ago and we happened to be talking about baseball (once in about probably 10 times I've talked about it in my life) and right then the girl's cell phone in the booth next to us goes off and plays "Take me out the ballgame". That was a weird coincidence.
I made my own long and dissonant ringtone for text messages so that it will wake me up at night if a server goes down.
Vibrating is the "other" useful battery powered utility that a woman can't live without!!
This is an interesting article, there seems to be a growing intrigue into ringtones. Recently i read about a study being done at Cornell with ring tones. Users are being studied for a year and they are trying to determine what goes into people's decisions to buy a certain ringtone. I guess this is really becoming a huge business.
Be better in bed. Wikiafterdark!
From the proliferation of (what I consider to be) annoying ring tones, I really feel alone in the world with my lowly silent setting.
For the life of me, I can not figure out why someone would take the time to set up a custom ringtone - let alone pay for one.
I guess it's the same people that blare their radio in the car with the windows rolled all the way down.
I'm a big tall mofo.
Which is exactly why I have mine set to vibrate mode. The reality is, during a meeting, nobody gives a shit what kind of music I like. Cell phone use is intrusive enough without the addition of "look how cool I am" ring tones.
God - the world does not need musical ring tones. Really, we don't. Without doubt they are always irritating and annoying to everyone else.
Really, just because you think that the Looney Tunes themes is cute doesn't mean that the people around don't view you as an idiot.
Three Squirrels
Of course I've got a new one to add to rude cell phone use. In a movie theater if you have a bright screen on your phone, cover it with your hand so it doesn't distract other people.
Though on the good side technology is getting to the point where it can effectively block cell phone signals so since it is obvious people won't police themselves it is only a matter of time before more and more public places like movie theaters block it for them.
-- Slashdot, making the Left look conservative since 1997.
I spent three days of productive work time listening to polyphonic ringtones...in a meeting, this phone's gonna go off-- what are they going to hear?
"You're fired."
Tech, life, family, faith: Give me a visit
I just started a ringtones on my site last month. I've already sold over 3000 ringtones in over 50 countries. I'd say that ringtone sales are going strong.
-- these are only opinions and they might not be mine.
Personally I refuse to buy ringtones. If I like a tune, I've probably bought it on CD; why should I pay MORE money to have it on my phone? (Don't tell me, some record industry group thinks I owe them for performance royalties for letting my phone ring in a public place? What if I _promise_ not to take my phone outside my house???)
m ).
.wav & .mp3 files on and use those as ringtones.
Even if you do decide to buy a ringtone, you've then got to hunt around and find somewhere that isn't charging you 5 euros a month for some subscription you didn't even know you were signing yourself up for! (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4295625.st
Personally I now stick to phones that you can put
here's your fix... Give an MP3/MIDI... :P
Don't call me back. Give me a call back. Bye. So yeah. But bye our, well, but alright we are on a shirt this chill.
I refuse to pay for ringtones. You go on these sites and most of them are crap anyway. For the large part they are just sound clips from the latest teen gangsta sensation. And they charge, what, $5 a pop for this garbage?
I have a Motorola v551 which is able to interpret general MIDI files and MP3s. Adding ringtones is as simple as jumping on a MIDI archive or ripping one of my CDs, truncating the song down to the part I want, and transferring them to the phone with the data cable.
Buying ringtones is right up there with paying for pr0n in my book.
-R
I don't have a cell phone you insensitive clods!
I'm saying this on behalf of everyone who hates mobile phones.
FUCK OFF!
It's annoying as hell to be talking to someone when they suddenly pick up their phone and cut you off mid sentence. Or you're in a shop and suddenly a phone rings and 12 people dive head first into their bag.
I miss the days of the early 90s where the only people who mobile phones were people who needed them, not every middle age woman and 12 year old girl within a 3 mile radius of the shopping part of town.
I like muppets.
Hey, how about a cell phone vibration mode which simulates an Oscillon so that slowly the loose pens, clips and paper on the meeting table begin forming interesting patterns...
My point is, in addition to the advent of new ringtone technology, cell phone manufacturers should conduct research and development to allow people to set the intensity of their phone's vibration to a point that the phone's vibrating is as quiet as possible while shaking hard enough for the person to feel it. This cannot be the same setting for all people due to bodyfat variations, so it has to be adjustable. C'mon, science!
I use a recording of a vintage telephone's mechanical ringer. It gets my attention, and isn't horribly aggravating -- it's quite obviously a telephone, making a sound to which most people are accustomed.
Ericofon.com doen't just have Ericsson phones -- they have all types of ringer recordings, which I have had good luck converting to AMR (once I change the WAV file a bit so my AMR converter will work) and USBing over to my Nokia phone.
The sound can be kind of surprising if you aren't expecting it, being as it sounds just like a regular telephone but is in someone's pocket, but it sounds kind of nice, and whoever said that a telephone's ringer should be a bloody iPod?
I still use one of the default ring tones, the one that goes "burddt-burdddt". It's identical to what solid snake has on his codec in the Metal Gear Solid games. I use it because when I get calls, I feel like Snake getting more intelligence from HQ! It makes my life really exciting sometimes! I must go now, HQ needs me to pick milk up from the ammo dump....I mean store.
"If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer
I believe that every cellphone on the planet should have just 1 fixed ringtone that cannot be changed. It should be some guy announcing in a loud and obnoxious voice, "LOOK EVERYONE! I HAVE A CELLPHONE AND I'M AN *ASSHOLE*!" Then most people would keep their cellphone on silent and the issue wouldn't ever come up.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Sometimes I feel like John Cleese yelling, "It's f***ing seabird f***ing flavored".
I want my stereo to play music.
I don't need my phone to play a bad rendition of some tune - I want it to ring.
I want my beer to taste like, um, beer - not razzberries, lemons, etc.
Maybe I've become an old coot. But is sure saves me money.
BTW, I selected the "falling rockets" built in ring on my Nokia. Everyone hates that tone (my wife says, "your phone is crying") so I've never heard that ring on another phone. Perfect - I never have to do the "self-frisk" whenever a phone rings.
~~~~~~~
"You are not remembered for doing what is expected of you." - Atul Chitnis
So someone can show their individuality (just like everone else.)
Or (the Reader's Digest version)
Moo.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Someone should make a audio file ringtone that says "I'm terribly sorry - it's my phone"... :)
I grabbed a couple hundred from a pay site that way, got them to play in xmms, along with selected Weird Al tunes, then plugged the sound card output into the company phone system's "hold" music for a couple of days (took them that long to realize people on hold were getting Neutron Dance or Amish Paradise instead of muzak)...
There are websites that have have huge collections of MIDI. There's everything from TV themes to pop music to automated Mozart minuette generators. Grab one, shove it in your phone and begin annoying people immediately. It's just not that hard. $2.00 seems usurious.
John
I find that musical ringtones are personality amplifiers. for that .01% of people that are already cool without a ringtone, a clever ringtone will enhance their attitude. For people like the submitter, having your phone break out a speed metal riff, will reall bring out the fact that you are a pathetic loser who relies on their electronic accessories to define them.
ringtone != cool (if you are reading this, you are not in that sliver of culture that can pull off a ringtone, please, for the love of god, switch to vibrate)
sorry, that is just the way it is.
(for full disclosure, I have my ringtone set to vibrate, since I am not in the top 0.01% of coolness)
My cell phone has a bunch of ring tones, all the crap Samsung added. I use two of them, one is a normal US ringer, the other is vibrate. Most of the time it's set on vibrate.
There are few things more annoying than being out in public listening to some horrible scratchy version of the latest "music" the Top 40 has inflicted on us. Bonus irritation points if you're in the movie theatre (those sort of people need to be tortured without mercy).
Might I suggest "Useful Idiot" by Tool.
In a quiet room, in a meeting, this phone's gonna go off-- what are they going to hear?
Well, in my neck of the woods, if they hear anything other than the gentle buzz of a phone set to vibrate, it'll be the distant sound of your phone shattering into a thousand pieces on the sidewalk four stories below.
I have two real annoying ringtones. One humorously annoying and the other has people seeking me out everytime they hear it.
:)
Bananaphone by Raffi
Everybody Everybody!! from Homestarrunner
Bananaphone has people at work call me so they can hear the song.
Never saw the need for the ringtone company though, past phones permitted me to type in songs, when I was bored in a meeting. Current Phone permits me to take any sound out there wav, mp3, midi, etc and play it. Heck I can even record annoying phone calls and make them ring tones.
Gator/Claria is Spyware.
I can tell it's my phone ringing because it's the only one in the vicinity that sounds like a phone and not the sped-up voice some deranged individual trying to sound like a two-stroke engine being passed off as the voice of some godforsaken Blu-Tac-coloured Smurf-orc menace.
People in the UK, Europe, and possibly further afield know exactly to what I am referring.
Just think of how many hungry mouths could be fed by the money spent on downloading this monstrosity. Just think how many phone-calls could be made. Shameful.
Leaving your phone on a hard desk when set to vibrate's pretty damn annoying. The whole desktop acts as an amplifier, and if it rings long enough, it goes "thump" when it falls off the edge onto the floor.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
I had the chorus from this great song. Took the time to program it myself on my first mono-tone cell phone. "I give you my affection and I give you my time, trying to get a connection on the telephone line!" -- I thought I was so witty (well, I was). Unfortunately in 2 years of having the phone, only one person ever recognized it and said something. Now I vibrate. :-P
A buddy of mine and I decided that the ringtones we really really really wanted were the music from isi and Final isi. This is no mean feat, however: our phones (Sanyo SCP-8100s) only play midi and some crappy .wav format, and the latter is clearly unacceptable (both because it's limited in length to 30 seconds and because... well... it's just not cool enough!).
So what did we do? Jim modified DOSBOX's OPL3 emulation code to dump out the opcodes being sent to the FM channels and handed over the output to me.
From there, it was a matter of parsing the various channel setup data into some semblance of notes, deciding which combination of general MIDI patches best emulated the sound of the FM synthesizer given the patchset on my phone, and writing a whole bunch of code.
In the end, we did it: isi.mid and fisi.mid are the full soundtracks to isi and Final isi, respectively. In addition, I made a couple other versions of the Final isi soundtrack to skip to various parts of it that are more interesting and/or make better ringers than starting at the beginning: fisi2.mid, fisi3.mid.
These ringers pretty much rule the roost.
-rsw
Years ago, a guy I worked with audio-edited the Windows "You have mail" voice with a Southpark clip. So about every 20 minutes it said, "OH MY GOD!!! ... you have mail ... YOU BASTARD!!!"
The guy himself was incredibly annoying, but I never got tired of hearing that. Seems funny even now.
What I don't understand is why people purchase ringtones at all when almost every phone I've dealt with accepts MIDI formatted music of one type or another. There are websites that have have huge collections of MIDI.
I agree completely. I have Jimi Hendrix, Metallica and AC/DC MIDI ringtones on my phone.
You should see some of the looks I get! I don't know why, it's not like Hendrix's guitar sounds any better than General MIDI patch 029, is it?
Though I'm not sure that "bagpipes" was the best instrument to render Metallica in....
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
I'm working on an opensourced program that will ease producing wallpapers and ringtones and send them directly to your phone or webserver for you. If interested ask on the mobile-oss mailing list. Let me know what model of phone you have and what carrier you use.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
If you put a planner item in its calender and say
Meeting at 11 for 30min, the phone should auto go to silent mode.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
People are too dumb to realize this.
I happen to have download my ringtone via GPRS, but this still turned out to be cheaper than anything else.
What gets me is - people actually PAY for ring tones. Get a Nokia (which are pretty much the best phones anyway). Go to the Nokia web site, and download their software. Now you can create ANY ring tone from ANY CD you want. Soft Cell, Young Marble Giants, Converge.... you name it, you can do it. Alert tones, wallpapers, etc. too.
Okay, for those interested here is how you go about doing this (CORRECTLY!):
1. Get a decent cellphone that supports WAV or MP3's as ring tones.
2. Download Winamp
3. Go here for winamp plugins that emulate NES games.
4. And some emulated music of course:
5. Play song in winamp, use the Nullsoft Disk Writer plug-in to generate a wave file
6. Edit in your favorite WAV editor to get a 30 second clip and save as MP3/WAV.
7. Save it to your phone. Sending it via bluetooth is easiest.
So there you go. No $2.50 charge for a ring tone. Takes some work, but it's WELL worth it.